Graveyard Prayer
By Poetry Issue 92
Lord, here I am again at the graveyard where I’ll be buried, but for now where I rest before walking back home. I like to lie with my back on the grass and study the clouds, a Constable imposter, or sit on my gravesite and look at this little village— the cemetery, seven old houses…
Read MoreMorning Prayer with Hopkins’ Kestrel
By Poetry Issue 92
It is required you do awake your faith, Paulina says to Leontes, and these crows, spurting from the night’s silence into the gray before dawn’s rose, yell it in through my open window. I am slow to cooperate. O Lord, I owe you at least the modest diligence of looking carefully each day; so let…
Read MoreStalking the Spirit
By Essay Issue 67
The following is adapted from the commencement address for the Seattle Pacific University Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing delivered on August 7, 2010. THIS PROGRAM IS blessed to have its intensive, ten-day residencies at two of the most beautiful places on the continent: the high desert of Santa Fe, New Mexico, and…
Read MoreKinds of Resistance
By Poetry Issue 76
The animal in us wants to leap up, leap out maybe, like the dog on its chain trying to bound higher and farther than the chain allows because the two boys in their kiddie pool are bounding, scooping up water in their hands and tossing it and jumping, as the woman beside the house on…
Read More